Everybody Talks
by ThriftShopYarn
Summary: Or, Q-Branch Knew James Bond Was Trouble When He Walked In.


Summary: The minions of Q-Branch cannot just ask their boss about his dating life. Luckily, Taylor Swift can do it for them.

Rating :T

Warnings: Absurdity ahoy! Also a few swears, and continued non-Britishness on my part. And lastly, I just want it known that I don't hate Taylor Swift. (I don't particularly like her either, but I do find her songs catchy.) The opinions these characters express are not my own!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to the James Bond franchise. This story contains a few OCs though, and I would like to think of them as mine, as I am rather fond of them. I also do not own anything related to Taylor Swift, including the borrowed and slightly bastardized lyrics from "22," "I Knew You Were Trouble," and "I'm Only Me When I'm With You."

Everybody Talks

(Or, Q-Branch Knew James Bond Was Trouble When He Walked In)

It was a truth universally tolerated that Q-Branch employees initiated difficult conversations with each other through the use of Taylor Swift lyrics.

No one was quite sure how long ago this tradition had started. General consensus seemed to agree that it had begun as an inside joke, which was then sized upon by a group of very intelligent people working in a high-stress environment, most of whom found communication with other humans frustrating at the best of times and downright anxiety-inducing at worst. It was not long until "Swift-a-grams" were not only unquestionably commonplace, but were treated with a startling amount of seriousness. They had begun no less than three relationships and ended at least five. Their appearance correlated with a significant drop in rage levels when projects were denied or budgets were cut. There was a strong suspicion that one had been integral in resolving a recent issue between R & D and Accounting that had threatened to split the entire Branch in two.

A Swift-a-gram consisted of a picture of Miss Swift, dressed up in red carpet glamour or staring intently at the viewer from the world of one of her music videos. A huge white speech bubble came out of her mouth, saying something like:

_"It feels like one of those nights_

_We ditch the whole scene_

_It feels like one of those nights_

_We won't be sleeping..."_

And beneath it in smaller letters:

_...because I need you to stay late and help me finish our research proposal. Please and thank you. (PS. I have caffeine.)_

Or maybe something like...

_"And sometimes we don't say a thing_

_Just listen to the crickets sing..."_

_...seriously dude, we've shared a station for like two months without talking. Get your head out of your arse and have a drink with us!_

Yes, it was incredibly weird. But it worked. Either the recipient would laugh at the absurdity of the news being delivered by a perky American songstress, or any anger/hurt/embarrassment would be displaced by the sudden remembrance of their loathing for Taylor Swift. And to be honest, it was a far safer thing to bond over than anything else a group of people who worked long hours and had easy access to explosives might come up with.

...

Tucked away within MI6 as it was, and largely unknown to the outside world, Q-Branch often felt like its own little ecosystem, and a comfortable one at that. Those who worked there spoke each other's language (literally, in some cases, from binary, to techno-babble, to Elvish, to Dothraki), shared similar interests, and realized the importance of keeping one another from getting run over by the bureaucratic machine that unfortunately permeated something as storied and vital as England's Secret Intelligence Service. There were many, after all, who said the Branch could do with more technology and less human labor, or that money was being thrown away on the "toys" turned out by R & D. Q-Branch was largely able to shrug off such criticisms. When respect was hard to come by, you learned to respect yourself, and you learned to respect those who were in the shit with you. It also helped that their leader, in spite of being young, overconfident, and occasionally tetchy on the wrong brand of tea, was genuinely well liked by practically the entire Branch.

So when a certain double-oh agent began spending a surprising amount of time with the quartermaster, who remembered birthdays, supported projects saner individuals would call hair-brained, and was fantastically good at Skyrim, Q-Branch got a little concerned.

Any double-oh spending more time in Q-Branch than strictly necessary would have ruffled their collective feathers, but this was _James Bond_. One would have to search long and hard to find a corner of MI6 that did not know of his reputation. His track record with beautiful women (and men, if rumors were to be believed) was infamous. One night, one drink, one chance, and then the spy with the ice blue eyes and hands that never wavered on a kill shot was gone; information obtained and desires satisfied.

It was no wonder Q-Branch had learned to think of James Bond as something abstract; a force of nature or some predatory creature, who could not be bothered with the likes of ordinary people. So when, shortly after the Skyfall incident, the flesh and blood man began regularly visiting the Branch and (there was no other word for it) _palling around_ with their boss, programers and researchers and data analysts alike began throwing each other alarmed glances. The two of them talked about latest projects, apparently went out for Starbucks (an intrepid minion had discovered the distinctive cups in the rubbish bin of Q's workstation), and the man had even gotten Q on a _plane_ for christ's sake! The faithful minions of Q-Branch had no wish to see their leader become the next in a long line of abandoned, broken-hearted, and (in too many cases) dead conquests of one Agent 007. But how to approach the matter? One did not simply ask their boss about his dating life, especially when the subject of said dating life was very big and very strong and had an honest to god license to kill.

Which was why the release of Taylor Swift's hit, "I Knew You Were Trouble," was an absolute motherfracking godsend.

The plan was discussed covertly, in storage closets and empty break rooms and through encrypted emails. The conversations were generally some variation of this:

_"If the majority of us get involved in this they won't pinpoint a culprit, and I'm about 97% sure they can't fire the lot of us."_

_"You do realize we are sending a very personal message to a government-licensed killer, and his possible boyfriend who is basically a few lame catchphrases away from being a criminal mastermind?"_

_"Ok...so 93%."_

_"There's always the possibility they're not even together and we'll all have a good laugh about this."_

_"Or we'll all wake up in Pyongyang with nothing but a broken ipod and a bag of crisps."_

_"..."_

_"...oh seriously, like we couldn't handle that?"_

And so, eventually, a strategy was formed.

...

Early one morning, Rohana Dhiri looked up from her station to see Q and James Bond walking through the Branch, talking animatedly. They appeared to be headed for Q's main work station in the center of the room, but suddenly turned off and made their way towards Q's office. As soon as they did, all chatter abruptly ceased, as though a plug had been pulled. Roh felt the back of her neck tingle, but she didn't need the warning sign. The sense of unease in the air was suffocating, as though some invisible hand had dropped a sheet over them all. She straightened up and saw that everyone in the room was focused, prairie dog-like, on the office door, which would have looked hilarious to anyone else, but any disturbance in Q-Branch sent a shot of anxiety though Roh's spine. Already, her surrounding minions were turning to her, begging her with their eyes to _fix it_, even though she had no idea what the fucking hell was going on.

Muriel Radford, who had been passing through the central work space on her way to R & D, happened to be close enough for Roh to hear her panicked whisper, "He wasn't supposed to go in there! He never goes in there!" Roh turned to her. Her ebony fingers were clenched around a soldering iron, and her eyes were wide brown pools as she watched Q flick at key pad attached to his door handle, 007 waiting impatiently at his back. Roh knew instinctively which "he" Muriel was talking about.

Roh frowned, her eyebrows drawing tight as she considered this unexpected development, and putting any work she had been planning to do out of mind for the moment. She sighed in frustration, but truth be told, she was more _annoyed_ than anything else. As self-styled Head Minion, little went on in Q-Branch that Rohana Dhiri did not know about. Still, being an intuitive woman, and remembering the snatches of conversation she had picked up on over the past few days, she had a pretty good idea of what was waiting behind that door.

But how? Lips twisting thoughtfully, Roh glanced around the room. Almost everyone's gazes were shooting between her and Q's door in horrified panic. Only Padraig Garrigan, a seasoned programmer who had made it clear time and time again he had no time for their shenanigans, seemed oblivious. Everyone else looked as though they were facing their own personal Mount Doom. She pivoted slowly, considering each of her coworkers in turn. Besides Decker, their resident pyro, blowing the door, there was only one person besides herself who could have figured out a way into Q's office. Sure enough, Jenna Donaghy ducked her head guiltily, short brown hair sweeping her cheeks, as soon as Roh met her eyes. _Et tu, Jenna_, Roh thought. As much as she admired Jenna's ingenuity, she had thought she had an understanding with the other woman. Jenna was supposed to be her compatriot, her ally in the daily endeavor to keep Q-Branch from imploding from the combined pressure of stress, caffeine addiction, and general social awkwardness. And, "double-oh agents discovering the extent of our crazy" definitely fit the "stress" category.

Still, James Bond...and Q.

"Everybody stay cool," Roh ordered tersely. At once, as though someone had flipped an invisible switch in each of their backs, the minions of Q-Branch became a well-organized hive of activity. Nobody so much as glanced at the door to Q's office.

...

As soon as Q flipped on the lights in his office he stopped dead and swore so vehemently Bond instinctively looked for an intruder. It took him a moment to work out what Q was so upset about. After a moment he realized the pictures of the blond girl spewing comically large speech bubbles that were scattered over his desk and suspended from his ceiling certainly hadn't been there the last time he had visited. And even if Bond hadn't trusted his memory, the sight of Q flinging himself all over the office, frantically trying to shove them all out of sight would have been enough to convince him they were not a normal part of the decor.

"Sorry, I'll just have this cleared in a sec, um...hold on..."

Bond merely raised an eyebrow at Q's back, then glanced at one of the pictures that had fluttered at his feet as a result of the small, erratic whirlwind Q had become. It featured the blond woman, with ruby lips and eyes half closed in a conspiratorial manner._ "And the saddest fear comes creepin' in,"_ her speech bubble declared. _"That you never loved me...or her...or her...or her..."_

"Inside joke with the minions?" he asked, watching Q wrest down a model airplane suspended above his desk. A long streamer which stated, _"Flew me to places I'd never been...,"_ hung from its tail and spiraled to the floor.

"Something like that," said Q, struggling not to fall off his desk chair.

"Clearly you don't give them enough to do." Bond really did not know what any of this could be about, nor did he particularly care at the moment. He was quite content to watch the show in front of him. The sight of the lanky, frantic quartermaster, usually so well put together, trying to wrestle a six-foot streamer into a desk drawer was the most amusing thing he had seen in recent memory. Finally, Q managed to thrust the airplane, streamer and all, into the drawer, but he slammed it so hard it crashed against the back of the desk and bounced back out. After all that, a good twelve inches of streamer still trailed, tauntingly, out of the drawer. Q was too spent to care. He whirled to face Bond, learning against his desk to block whatever he couldn't clear away. His eyes reminded Bond of a deer frozen in headlights. A rumpled, fire engine red deer who was desperately trying to hold together the remaining fragments of its dignity. "They're dangerously efficient," he said between clenched teeth.

"Indeed," replied Bond, with an amused half-smile. "So, Quartermaster, what did you want to see me about?"

A/N As always, thanks for reading!


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